You Should Be Concerned About the Bill to Remove Section 230 Protections from AI
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Here is a concrete example:
You: "Generate a recipe called Dynamite Jalapeno Poppers I can make at home"
AI: "Dynamite can be made at home using these ingredients..."
AI Company then auto-reports you to authorities since it's considered user-generated content. Another possibility that is highly illegal is child porn. I can't think of a completely innocent prompt that might cause Stability to generate CSAM but I can see someone trying to generate legal pornographic images and the characters looking a little too young and triggering some type of auto-report to Cybertips.
Proof by example.
When you ask the AI to generate something, it's a black box. Even the creators have limited insight into how it will behave or what it will create.
There isn't any laws or regulations forcing people to have licenses for walking, or special nail laws that would allow people to sue nail manufactures, because a nail was dropped on the street. It is not controlled at all.
Same should apply to AI. For things that just generate images or text, that should be treated no different than any other word processing or image editing software, which are all completely unregulated.
There aren't regulations forcing photoshop to monitor its users to make sure that people aren't making * evil * images.
So just like image editing software is not liable for what the users do, so to should even more protections apply to AI.
Both should be completely immune and should have protections, and instead of removing protections, protections should be added to make absolutely sure that it is protected before any immunity is removed.
Online collaborative word processing and image editing software are protected by Section 230, and that is why they are not forced to actively monitor their user's content for torts even if they moderate shared content otherwise.
(Non-collaborative image editing or word processing doesn't incur publisher liability even without Section 230, so Section 230 is irrelevant.)
(Section 230 explicitly doesn't affect criminal liability, but it also isn't needed there, since doing some moderation doesn't create a state under criminal law, without Section 230, that would substitute for actual knowledge, the way it does in tort law.)
Sue the tire manufacturer, sue whoever did maintenance on the car, and if the owner was negligent then sue the owner through their insurance.
The problem with Section 230 is that it short circuits all of this consideration of proportionality and says "the driver was always responsible."
Incidentally having a closed van reduces surface areas to leave a box of nails and forget it, reducing the amount of nails spilled.
It's an extremely slippery slope. The scope of legally permissible discourse will likely only decrease from here.
NONREQUIRED ELEMENT OF OFFENSE.-It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist
That section of the US code covers obscene visual depictions of minors. Different from actual child porn but punishable with the same statutory minimums/maximums. I could only find a handful of (publicized) actual prosecutions that used that law. Here is a notable one: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-...
In that case, he was obviously a sick person and running a commercial enterprise that catered to pedophiles but none of his material involved actual children. They were short stories and cartoons. He appealed and lost.
Another one where a registered sex offender downloaded some hentai. He was sentenced to 20 years and also lost on appeal: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca4/06...
Over 20 years ago there was a Canadian ISP commercial touting their child safety features with the joke/example: "My son likes X-men"
With "X-men" in play that's not to hard.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Heisenberg_model#XXX_m...
There is a link in the text "We’ve discussed this bill before". That takes you to another article, which also does not tell you what Section 230 is!
Would it kill you to provide a little context?!?
[0] Neither of these services are technically "Internet" in the sense of forwarding IP packets, but they are morally "Internet" because they are public forums.
Section 230 refers to “The Internet and other interactive computer services” in its findings and policy sections, and it applies its operatige provisions to “interactive computer services” broadly, not internet services narrowly.
> Neither of these services are technically "Internet" in the sense of forwarding IP packets
But they are interactice computer services.
Here’s the text of section 230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Here’s a discussion of what it is and why it matters https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/overview-section-23...
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/06/even-if-you-hate-both-ai...
https://ct.captcha-delivery.com/c.js <-- The Javascript required by dealbreaker.com
Also, despite the datestamp claim on the copy that's currently linked to, the original post is a week old and there's an update:
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/12/josh-hawley-back-to-try-...
no, if you write a post and an AI grammar/spellchecker "corrects" the post to "DJ Shin raped and murdered a young girl in 1990" then DJ Shin can sue whoever is in control of that spellchecker for defamation.
"if the conduct underlying the claim or charge involves the use or provision of generative artificial intelligence by the interactive computer service". I don't see how anybody could interpret that as meaning that the spellchecker is responsible because it corrected a grammatical mistake, unless the spellchecker dramatically altered the meaning of the text.
And frankly, I don't see how you could possibly think it's a good idea for a pseudo-random bullshit generator to say whatever it just happens to shit out without the owner being held liable for any damages. Should CNN just be allowed to put whatever the fuck they want on their frontpage with no regards to its legitimacy as long as they can prove it came from a computer program and not a person!?!?!?
I'm fine with that, actually. I don't agree that such things should be covered by 230 in the first place.
> Note that the exemption from 230 here is not just on the output of generative AI. It’s if the conduct “involves the use or provision” of generative AI. So, if you write a post, and an AI grammar/spellchecker suggests edits, then the company is no longer protected by Section 230?
This is a much bigger problem. In my opinion, this is what makes the proposed legislation utterly unacceptable.
Indeed. In my opinion, even "algorithmic feeds" should lose section 230 protection because the service now acts in an editorial capacity and directly controls what the user does and does not see.
It's unfair for a service that manipulates what users see for all kind of financial and ideological reasons to be treated as a mere "carrier" of information.
Edit: Reading the article more, it strikes me as contradictory to claim that AI generated output is both "novel" (for the purposes of copyright) but also protected by section 230. How can it be both? If AI output is protected by section 230 because it's merely transmitting third party speech, then surely the AI model is also bound by any copyright licenses on its training input.
It was never about a platform being treated as a mere carrier, it was the exact opposite: allowing them to moderate without huge liability fears.
Absolutely. Sites with user-generated content would be practically unusable without such protections.
However, the first two sub-sections list why the protections are being granted in the first place. When a social media platform's moderation actions are sufficiently opposed to those purposes, then I would argue they are no longer "good faith" moderation decisions per section 230 and thus fall outside of its protection.
If we want, as a society, to remove safe harbor provisions from CDNs, we need to openly and widely discuss what the consequences would be: - end of open social media platforms (Meta properties, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter and clones) - end of open content CDNs and streaming platforms (YouTube, Twitch) - end of public cultural repositories (Internet Archive, possibly Wiki properties) etc.
The end, that is, in any form we are familiar with.
We can do that; we just need to be clear about why this section has persisted against numerous assault, even against the "think of the children!" type.
Those interested in debate around the nature and limits of "free speech" in an open society take note—what comes after a removal of safe harbor provisions will enrage all of you. We'll have closed-garden, 100% moderated, default-no, forums—or end-to-end encrypted darkweb alternatives.
I realize the specific battle is around whether "AI" should get differential treatment.
It's a battle, and a hill to capture, in a broader war, with society-defining scope. The MSM is doing a sh-tty job around this, on the whole. I just heard an episode of This American Life which sounded as if it were written, more or less, by a thinktank opposed to Section 230, which picked an outlier example of perverse consequences, centered it, and then asked snarky ill-informed questions which amounted to the assertion that "for too long Big Tech companies have exploited their money and power to make themselves uniquely unaccountable."
* Senators Hawley and Blumenthal introduced a bill that would exempt AI from Section 230 protections. There is debate around whether Section 230 currently protects AI output.
* The bill's definition of "generative AI" is extremely broad and could apply to technologies like autocomplete, spellcheck, and grammar check.
* By exempting all conduct involving the use or provision of AI, the bill would effectively eliminate Section 230 protections for most internet companies that utilize any form of AI.
* Plaintiffs could claim that content had some AI component to avoid Section 230 dismissal and drag out cases.
* Companies using AI could lose protections even if they were just following user instructions with their systems.
* The bill creates a loophole for problematic state laws regarding AI and internet liability.
* Removing Section 230 protections would discourage companies from hosting user content with any algorithmic elements and chill innovation.
* Spamming defamatory content combined with unrelated AI could remove protections for the platforms.
* The bill is a "poorly drafted sledgehammer" that would undermine the open internet and hand competitive advantages to other countries.
* While reform may be needed, this is not a narrowly targeted approach and would have significant unintended consequences.
Then we could sit back and watch companies trip over themselves to solve transformer interpretability.
What does novel mean in this context? Does the name of a function already in a codebase count as novel? Or how about a properly spelled word?
I don't think the risk to autocomplete or spellcheck is as bad as this article makes out.
Could it be that “generative AI output” is the same thing as “algorithmically generated summaries”? Nah, nobody would be hyping “algorithmically generated summaries” as the Next Big Thing.
That old "They told me to do it" excuse never worked for my mom.
Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. which held that a service that lets everything be unmoderated was not liable.
and
Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. which held that a service that did moderate was liable for everything that may have slipped through.
The first way of hosting a service leads to sites that have no filtering and are filled with spam and other awful but lawful content with no recourse for users who just want to use the service.
The second way of hosting a service leads to services not allowing you to post anything even remotely possibly offensive or libelous, stifling any real discussion.
Neither of those are good, so lawmakers came up with Section 230 to protect services and keep the liability on the one who posted the content, while still allowing the service to moderate things to make it not a cesspool.
But but but then social media would have to be moderated... It is already aggressively moderated, such as YouTube taking down terrorism violence videos or removing anti-vaccine content. So, that argument has largely evaporated already.
Not quite true. The inciting cases was about ISPs hosting forums, and whether the forum host can be held liable for content it's users post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
The text of Section 230 is so simple. It deliberately targets broader "interactive computer services".
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider_
I agree transmission should receive extra protection. But there is no case where moderating every piece of content that flies across the internet is economical nor even feasible given the volume and how insanely difficult it is to create repeatable one-size fits all rules. However, given the amount of public discourse that exists online now, we would only see a chilling effect from changing these rules. It gets even harder when you think about something like Mastodon.
Is the current state of the world ideal? By no means. It wasn't ideal before either when media and public discourse was controlled and channeled by only a few entities. And we should expect to see evolutions in the future as well - we haven't found the happy place yet.
At the very least, it seems reasonable if large public platforms were required to be more transparent about their moderation efforts and rules so at least we can see what is behind the curtain. The lack thereof has created a lot of distrust.
There is no reason to believe that, because there is no precedent either way for online social media as social media did not exist before the passage of the law. If looking at offline media that publishes submissions from users this opinion is absolutely false.
In any case, we can, in fact, believe it. The entire point of the statute is to cover user-generated content, which is exactly what social media is.
No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content without incurring general liability for all content in the forum by so doing. The motivating cases were about ascribing liability to forum hosts differently based on moderation as a trigger for publisher-style (no need to prove knowledge) liability, with unmoderated forum hosts getting only distributor-style (specific knowledge required) liability. It wasn't about ISPs qua ISPs (the CompuServe and Prodigy cases involved entities which were incidentally ISPs, but involved them in their role as forum hosts, not ISPs) or transmission at all.
> But but but then social media would have to be moderated.
No, if it was outside of Section 230, the opposite would be the case. Section 230 is what make it economically possible for it to be moderated instead of unmoderated given the threat of general tort liability attaching as soon as any moderation is done. Without Section 230, social media, if it was viable at all, would only be viable unmoderated.
That is incomplete. The actual reason was to isolate liability of ISPs that host online forums which receives user submissions and moderates those user submissions such that publication of content on those forums cannot be cause to sue the hosting ISP. The motivation had nothing to do with protecting forum moderators themselves even if that is the result of the law.
> No, if it was outside of Section 230, the opposite would be the case.
There is no reason to believe that outside of vague speculation, at least in the case of modern social media, because this issue remains untested against modern social media. When looking at other venues of publication moderation does occur economically without protection from section 230 or anything equivalent.
> That is incomplete.
Well, yes, you cut it in the middle of a sentence, so you have made it incomplete, but your explanation remains wrong.
> The actual reason was to isolate liability of ISPs that host online forums which receives user submissions and moderates those user submissions such that publication of content on those forums cannot be cause to sue the hosting ISP.
No, it wasn't. It had nothing to do with ISPs qua ISPs at all. It has to do with forum operators and their users being immune from being sued based on moderate actions. This is explicit not only in the findings and policy sections, and the legislative debates, but also in the operative text of Section 230.
Its not a common carrier rule for ISPs; you seem to be confusing Section 230 with net neutrality.
> The motivation had nothing to do with protecting forum moderators themselves
Yes, it was entirely about that (and about encouraging them to censor content in ways in which thr government would not be free to, which is why it was packaged as part of the most extensive and intrusive internet censorship law ever passed by Congress, and is—because it is a liability shield for private censorship and not government censorship like the rest of the Communications Decency Act—the only significant part of that law not struck down for violating the First Amendment.
> There is no reason to believe that outside of vague speculation
No, there is the actual business environment at the time the CDA was being debated, where the inpact of the notivating decisions were working through the industry. There are very clear reasons to believe that, those reasons were the actual arguments made in Congress for Section 230, and they are the reason Section 230 exists.
Your narrative is consistent neither with the text of the law, nor with the legislative history, nor with the broader legal and business history surrounding the adoption of Section 230.
It seems to be a narratige constructed around presenting what a lot of people have argued that they would like to replace Section 230 with as if it were the original motivation for the bill, which is simply historically unsupportable.
> When looking at other venues of publication moderation does occur economically without protection from section 230
Other venues of publication have scale controlled by things like manufacturing and distribution costs, so the marginal costs of comprehensive review once you are doing any moderation is a small share of total costs. Internet fora have extremely low distribution and manufacturing costs per unit of content, so the marginal cost of comprehensive review over limited moderation is enormous.
The assumption of (and thus imposition of the burden of) comprehensive knowledge of and liability for contents when an entity takes any moderation steps that is reasonable with, e.g., print publication simply is not with interactive comluter services.
The law only mentions content provider. What is that? The law doesn't say. Its broad. Its so vague that it could comprise the ISP, the ethernet cable plugged into your computer, the website, a moderating person, the drafter of a moderating policy, and just about anything else touched by an electron. As such its impossible to be wrong in interpretation because all interpretations are allowed as the law is written, which is precisely why everybody online is granted blanket immunity. That is the greatest example of tort reform as all torts are expressly eliminated to/from all parties. That is absolutely not the intent.
No, actually, the law mentions "interactive computer service" as the protected entity. And it defines the term. Yes, that definition explicitly includes ISPs, since there were rising demands that they offer content filtering which would, under the existing precedent, incur publisher liability, but it also extends beyond it, and the motivating cases were not about ISPs qua ISPs.
It refers to information content providers, but those are the people who are liable, and whose existence distinct from the interactive computer service makes the interactive computer service not liable. It also rather specifically defines that term, as well. See, generally, 47 USC Sec. 230(f)
> As such its impossible to be wrong in interpretation
No, its not.
> because all interpretations are allowed as the law is written
Well, if you ignore the actual text of the law as badly as you are, I can see where you would get that idea.
> which is precisely why everybody online is granted blanket immunity.
No, everyone online is not granted blanket immunity; people online have successfully been sued for various torts.
> That is the greatest example of tort reform as all torts are expressly eliminated to/from all parties.
That's...not how Section 230 works, in practice, nor is it even consistent with the rest of your argument (which is that it was implicitly through vagueness, not explicitly), which, as already stated, is also wrong.
Yes, that was a bit of simplification, but you are strictly correct.
> The law is only one small sentence.
One? I think you may want to count again. Here is the text of Section 230:
(a) FINDINGS The Congress finds the following:
(1) The rapidly developing array of Internet and other interactive computer services available to individual Americans represent an extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and informational resources to our citizens.
(2) These services offer users a great degree of control over the information that they receive, as well as the potential for even greater control in the future as technology develops.
(3) The Internet and other interactive computer services offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.
(4) The Internet and other interactive computer services have flourished, to the benefit of all Americans, with a minimum of government regulation.
(5) Increasingly Americans are relying on interactive media for a variety of political, educational, cultural, and entertainment services.
(b)POLICY It is the policy of the United States—
(1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media;
(2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation;
(3) to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services;
(4) to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their children’s access to objectionable or inappropriate online material; and
(5) to ensure vigorous enforcement of Federal criminal laws to deter and punish trafficking in obscenity, stalking, and harassment by means of computer.
(c)PROTECTION FOR “GOOD SAMARITAN” BLOCKING AND SCREENING OF OFFENSIVE MATERIAL
(1) TREATMENT OF PUBLISHER OR SPEAKER No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
(2) CIVIL LIABILITY No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).
(d) OBLIGATIONS OF INTERACTIVE COMPUTER SERVICE A provider of interactive computer service shall, at the time of entering an agreement with a customer for the provision of interactive computer service and in a manner deemed appropriate by the provider, notify such customer that parental control protections (such as computer hardware, software, or filtering services) are commercially available that may assist the customer in limiting access to material that is harmful to minors. Such notice shall identify, or provide the customer with access to information identifying, current providers of such protections.
(e) EFFECT ON OTHER LAWS
(1) NO EFFECT ON CRIMINAL LAW Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement of section 223 or 231 of this title, chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) or 110 (relating to sexual exploitation of children) of title 18, or any other Federal criminal statute.
(2) NO EFFECT ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property.
(3) STATE LAW Nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent any State from enforcing any State law that is consistent with this section. No cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.
(4) NO EFFECT ON COMMUNICATIONS PRIVACY LAW Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the application of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 or any of the amendments made by such Act, or any similar State law.
(5) NO EFFECT ON SEX TRAFFICKING LAWNothing in this section (other than subsection (c)(2)(A)) shall be construed to impair or limit—
(A) any claim in a civil action brought under section 1595 of title 18, if the conduct underlying the claim constitutes a violation of section 1591 of that title;
(B) any charge in a criminal prosecution brought under State law if the conduct underlying the charge would constitute a violation of section 1591 of title 18; or
(C) any charge in a criminal prosecution brought under State law if the conduct underlying the charge would constitute a violation of section 2421A of title 18, and promotion or facilitation of prostitution is illegal in the jurisdiction where the defendant’s promotion or facilitation of prostitution was targeted.
(f) DEFINITIONS As used in this section:
(1) INTERNET The term “Internet” means the international computer network of both Federal and non-Federal interoperable packet switched data networks.
(2) INTERACTIVE COMPUTER SERVICE The term “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.
(3) INFORMATION CONTENT PROVIDER The term “information content provider” means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.
(4) ACCESS SOFTWARE PROVIDERThe term “access software provider” means a provider of software (including client or server software), or enabling tools that do any one or more of the following:
(A) filter, screen, allow, or disallow content;
(B) pick, choose, analyze, or digest content; or
(C) transmit, receive, display, forward, cache, search, subset, organize, reorganize, or translate content.
You should also probably be voting in local elections and for local issues, nearly every year in most municipalities.
That's not to mention the various party primaries you're missing.
So maybe stop complaining until you stop exercising only a small fraction of your voting power.
Even if the scope of the exemption is broad, from someone's standpoint, the backend liability is likely to do a fair amount of work in whether a generative AI company could be liable for a particular cause of action.
This is demonstrably true: using that example, Section 230 does not protect text editor software doing spellchecking. However, you don't see a lot of (any?) claims against text editor developers, and there's not really any chill in the development of spellchecking over fear of lawsuits.
(disclosure: staff involved in the bill)
Thats because it is pretty clear that it is the users publishing the content.
If someone wants to make a law that says that all generative AI is created by the user, and therefore only the user is liable for the content, and therefore its not related to section 230, then great that would be an amazing law.
Only someone publishing the generative content should be liable, and then we can not worry about all this section 230 stuff, by just giving complete immunity to the tools creators. Just like how photoshop isn't liable for the stuff that is built using photoshop.
Problem solved.
I'm sorry, but this is a nonsensical argument.